


propter bellum

by himbostratus



Category: Ancient History RPF, Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF
Genre: Alternate Ending, Domestic Bliss, M/M, Suicide Attempt Mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 04:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20924369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himbostratus/pseuds/himbostratus
Summary: a small thing i wrote when i should have been studying for midterms. this is based on an idea @caepio and i were talking about, supposing that brutus and antony yeet out of philippi and start anew somewhere in greece





	propter bellum

Brutus looks up from the ground and the warm, long rays of the setting sun stretch past the brim of his petasos to set his brown eyes ablaze. The skin on his hands is dry and cracked, dusted with a light layer of dirt caked to mud and settled in the creases of his palms and fingers. The rows of grapevines and olive trees seem innumerable in the waning scarlet light, shadows elongating, but they are only about fifty. Last year it wasn’t enough, but the villagers were skittish and wary of the Roman newcomers. Brutus couldn't blame them, but the superstition had gotten a bit out of hand. He tells himself that this year will be better. Mildly, he entertains the idea of moving again, settling by the coast and taking up fishing. It would be a risk, and one he thinks better of taking. It haunts his dreams every now and again, the thought of being ridiculed as a deserter and humiliation, taken back to Rome to be paraded in some endless triumph, imprisoned in a home he cannot recognise any longer. 

He hears the creak of wheels straining up the incline, the crux of which the little two-story house is settled on. His heart skips a beat with anxiety, and he briskly walks out of the vineyard to see who calls. An old Arabian horse with healed sores along its drastic spine pulls a wooden cart up to the house. A mutt dog with thick brown fur pants at its hooves. A man with broad shoulders leads the horse, a cloak about his neck, and a fine Roman sword at his hip. Brutus breathes a sigh of relief. He watches as he unyokes the horse and pours an old bucket of rainwater over its back, stopping to toss the last few drops on the dog, who sprints away. His hands must have been wet, for he runs his palm across the back of his neck, letting his shoulders slump. He pats the horse on the rump and it slowly clops off to a patch of grass nearby. The man leaves the bucket on the ground, glances at the sundial, and wanders inside the house. 

Brutus finds him upstairs in the near-empty bedroom, curled up around the shoddy blanket he had woven some time ago. By now, the dusk light has grown pale and far away. The smell of cooking vegetables and re-warmed bread wafts through the small house. All the man says is, “Sheep are to pasture. Saw a group of soldiers riding in from Rome, but nothing to be worried about.”

Brutus responds with the first thing that comes to mind: “Dinner’s ready if you’re hungry.”

Antony opens an eye. Brutus sees his grip grow firmer on the blanket with the loose threads and tangled portions. “I’ll wash up first.” He stands with a grunt, walking barefoot to where Brutus lingers in the threshold. He pauses by him, rests his hand on Brutus’s hip, and leans in to kiss him. Brutus turns his head, slow to meet Antony’s inquisitive gaze.

“You smell like shit.”

“And you think because you’ve been working in the fields you smell any better?” Antony’s tone is innocent, even as he forces a kiss on Brutus’s cheek. Brutus swats after him, a smile contorting on his lips. It wasn’t so long ago that a remark like that would have pushed Brutus into a melancholy spell. Antony had once described it as a type of grief, and yet Brutus was still slow to acknowledge that he was mourning his own life. The Rome they had toiled in was not a good one, and his life there was not good either, but he missed it fiercely and everything that came along with it. Alas, there was nothing to be done to revive what had already been lost for so long, and, with his own sword at his chest, Antony asked if he was to mourn Brutus too. 

Satisfied with himself, Antony strides out of the house and to the well that steadily irrigated the vineyard on the hill. Brutus can hear the mutt dog bark outside as he goes downstairs as well and gets his dinner. The porridge was too eagerly cooked and is still a bit hard, but the seasoning and vegetables forgives it. Pork had never been a particular favourite of his, but it was of Antony’s, and they hadn’t the money to disagree, so it was pork they ate. As Brutus cuts off a piece of bread, he cuts around a piece of mould and tests the hard bread beneath his hand. Parts of it flake off, so he pours a stream of olive oil beside it to soften it. Sugary confectionary and roasted dormice were commonplace in his mind still, but a ravenous belly was nondiscriminant towards week-old bread and honied cakes. 

Antony walks into the kitchen and sits across from Brutus, and Brutus doesn’t say anything as the man sets food in front of him. They eat quickly and thoughtlessly, leaving no fruit or stray piece of bread behind. Frugality long buried the patrician in Brutus, and his mind does not even entertain the idea of seconds. They talk amiably, aimlessly over beer (Wine is now for festivals and rarities only.), chuckling quietly over old jokes and people that seem to have existed centuries ago. They debate useless things; Brutus usually wins if he can keep himself from being irritated by Antony’s absurdity. They talk about today and tomorrow and what they want to buy at market day. 

Antony gets up and does the washing up without a word, and their conversation tapers off to silence once more. He looks different by the candlelight. Antony shaved again after a few days of letting the stubble grow out on his face, and his skin betrayed lines Brutus hasn’t noticed before. “I think it’s going to be cold tonight. You want a fire?”

Brutus mulls it over. The day had been warm, but the wind had been cool, and he noticed the dusting of snow in the mountains. “We’ll be warm enough together.” They had been sharing a bed for almost a year now. Brutus wasn’t sure why they ever tried to fool themselves and sleep apart. 

“You won’t make me sleep out in the fields with Odium and the horse, then?”

Brutus smiles and leans back on his palms. “What a novel idea...” A wind howls against the house, and a roll of thunder in the distance mimics the sound of a legion marching. The first time they shared a bed since Caesar’s death had been bedside a road somewhere in Macedonia on a narrow bedroll atop dirt and rocks. He had been afraid of getting a knife in his gut in the dead of night. When he stiffly crawls into bed beside Antony, sighing as the lumpy mattress caresses his sore joints, he worries only about Antony’s snores. “I think I’ll keep you with me, though.”

“How lucky am I,” Antony teases, wiping his hands on the dishtowel. "Come to bed, then; you look half-dead where you sit."


End file.
